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From Abandonment to Activation: Strategies for Urban Renewal
An overview of vacant property activation: how cities and communities move empty buildings and lots from short-term pop-ups to long-term redevelopment.
Planning and People
Vacant Property Reuse
Bringing abandoned buildings and lots back into use.
From Abandoned Buildings to Thriving Arts Spaces: Urban Renewal Success Stories
How empty buildings become studios, galleries and performance venues, with a labeled hypothetical example and the rent and displacement risks involved.
From Abandoned Buildings to Thriving Businesses: Urban Renewal Success Stories
How vacant storefronts and buildings get reused by local businesses, using composite examples and noting what often goes wrong along the way.
From Abandonment to Activation: Strategies for Urban Renewal in Emerging Markets
How abandonment and renewal differ in emerging market cities, where growth is fast, budgets are limited and land arrangements are often informal.
From Abandonment to Activation: Strategies for Urban Renewal in Emerging Markets: A Case Study
A clearly labeled composite case study of phased renewal in an emerging-market district, with what such cases teach and where the evidence is thin.
From Abandonment to Activation: Strategies for Urban Renewal in the US
A plain history of postwar urban renewal in the United States, its large-scale programs, the displacement criticisms, and the lessons for reusing vacant property.
From Blight to Beauty: Transforming Urban Spaces through Renewal
Practical, low-cost options for vacant lot reuse, including gardens, pocket parks and temporary uses, plus what to check before you start.
From Vacancy to Vibrancy: The Art of Urban Renewal
The usual stages of turning empty properties into active ones, and how public agencies, private owners and community groups each play a part.
From Vacant Lots to Vibrant Communities: Urban Renewal Success Stories
Hypothetical composite examples of neighbor-run lot projects and what such efforts usually teach about social ties, volunteer energy and long-term upkeep.
From Vacant Lots to Vibrant Parks: Urban Renewal Success Stories
How small empty lots become pocket parks: design basics, maintenance costs and who typically looks after them, with labeled composite examples.
From Vacant Lots to Vibrant Public Spaces: Urban Renewal Success Stories
Temporary, low-cost interim lot uses such as markets, events and gardens, and how short-term activity can lead to permanent uses, with labeled examples.
Revitalizing Abandoned Buildings through Creative Reuse
Imaginative, low-budget ways to put empty buildings to work as maker spaces, studios and community rooms, with a focus on ideas rather than conversion rules.
Revitalizing Abandoned Buildings: Urban Development Strategies for Adaptive Reuse
A practical sequence for a city facing many empty buildings: inventory, prioritizing, securing, choosing a reuse path and financing it.
Revitalizing Abandoned Buildings: Urban Renewal Success Stories
Labeled composite stories of reused buildings, focused on the lessons that recur and on where the evidence about outcomes is uncertain.
Revitalizing Abandoned Spaces: The Art of Urban Renewal
A look beyond buildings at underused urban space such as underpasses, alleys and side yards, and how design and use can bring them back to life.
Stabilizing Vacant Buildings Before Reuse
Low-cost measures that slow a vacant building's decline while its future is decided: water control, securing openings, ventilation and basic monitoring.
Related topics
More in planning and people
Renewal and Planning Planning basics, heritage reuse, downtowns and cultural districts. Inclusive Cities Equity, diversity and renewal without displacement. Blight and Regeneration What blight means and how neighborhoods are redeveloped. Historic Districts Renewing older neighborhoods while respecting their heritage. Neighborhood Revitalization Renewing whole neighborhoods with residents, housing and local services. Housing and Equity Housing costs, markets and fairness in renewal and development. Community Impact of Renewal Effects of renewal on culture, services, health, politics and daily life. Community Engagement How residents take part in shaping development and renewal. Governance and Policy How government, planning and design carry public policy into the city. Project Delivery The practical steps between a renewal idea and a finished project. Maps, Surveys and Evidence Simple methods planners use to see what is happening in a place.